Manifesto
6W Version 1.6 by Turia Madi with some edits by Hune Ceaulage #1. Who We?: We seem to be every-one and no-one. We do not seem to exist. We hold no gods, no leaders, no members, no prophets, and whathaveyous. Unless, of course, you choose to say differently. In short: We simply refuse to give out or accept any labels unless we (which seems to say: anyone and everyone) can discard them again at will. “THE PLASM SEEMS _____” Generally, we seem to be a group of individuals who create open-ended media, and do (creative) things because we want to change the/our universe. If there seems to be one thing we can agree on?, it’s that change itself is desirable when the other option is stagnancy (not to create a false dichotomy here). Novelty seems like a friend when diametrically opposed forces coexist. We do, indeed, like to keep our options open. Authority unchecked becomes entropy. We realize that some may desire authority to some degree (we aren’t all @narchists after all), but we question the desire for complete and pervasive authority. We want the option to submit, dominate, or discard both when we desire it! Change/Negentropy/Novelty means no permanent choices! Ours is an inclusive philosophy; we want everyone to have the kind of world they wish. We are creative, driven, energetic, enthusiastic, happy, inspired, intelligent, invisible, multifaceted, open-minded, slippery, boundary-blurring, boundary-breaking, boundary-crossing, no-good, low-life, visionaries who are sick and tired of being asleep. Then again, fuck all of that. We thrive and die on contradiction. We impose no limits on ourselves. Wake Up. #2. What We Do?: What the fuck does ECLECTOPLASM Do? That’s a good question. Really, we are only in one business: Creativity. We make “art” (we also make stuff that isn’t “art”, but it gets called that because it’s the closest category that it can get shoved into.) Thus, the more accurate label of “Creativity”. Creativity, as we define it, seems a threephase process: 1.Inspiration: this seems the experience of whatever we pay attention to. 2.Construction: where the art is made. 3.Distribution: the movement of the “art” through space and time. So why, you ask, is there all of this OTHER stuff thrown into the mix? Why the outlaw attitude? Why the Occult (which is to say, the hidden)? Why the extra puzzling pieces? Why the Philosophy? Why all of this STUFF? The answer, seems simple enough to us: it seems a by-product of the individuals who make Creative things. These things are intimately connected with our individual creativity and our lives, and if we want to include them, we will. Different opinions are not only allowed, but encouraged (not that we ever had the authority to “allow” or “disallow” them anyway). It’s that old disclaimer all over again: “The opinions and statements expressed are those of the person(s) concerned and not of ECLECTOPLASM.”. This isn’t to cover our asses, but rather to ensure the freedom of everyone involved. The aim(s) of the individual’s Creativity is up to the individual hirself. This means that we may sometimes seem to contradict each other, but we’re not hypocrites, only practically-minded (and human… maybe). But what about how-to articles and opinion pieces you ask? We certainly can’t claim that they are “art” or “creativity” right? Sure we can; why not? Just imagine for a moment that the Universe-at-large is a vast “canvas” of sorts. By manipulating the elements of the Universe, we can create changes in the Universe that are pleasing according to aesthetic impulse. Even culture itself is simply a vast artwork! We also would like you to examine our creative output itself as you would any other piece of art. Including the article you are reading right now. In any case, our creativity necessitates the construction of a meta-system of inclusiveness and tolerance. A Quantum-Paradigm springs forth whether we like it or not. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have lasted very long. We also want people to realize that Creation and Destruction are two sides of the same coin. We dare anyone to study the history of art in the last century and not reach the same conclusion. Creation and Destruction are subjective estimations. What is Destructive to one, is Creative to another (or is it the other way around. . .?). The introduction of new ideas causes old perceptions to be discarded. Generally, our Creativity involves: Operation Mindfuck, Guerrilla Ontology, Alien Sex, and all the other things your parents warned you about. The stuff that The Government doesn’t want us to do, the stuff that The Media doesn’t want us to do, the stuff that Society/Religion doesn’t want us to do, and even the stuff that we sometimes don’t or never want ourselves to do is all fair game. More specifically, when we aren’t having alien sex, we are into: Visual Artwork (Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Etc.); Comics & Graphic Novels; Music & Audio; Graffiti, Public, & Street Art (Which can be Illegal and/or/nor Destructive); Prose (Fiction + Nonfiction); Poetry; Zines; Animation; Movies/Film; and anything else we decide to create in the future (yes anything). #3. When We Come To Be?: Like any good Occult Society, we have both an Objective and Subjective (Mythological) History. Most will probably want “The Real Story”, so we can do that first. The thing is, there isn’t much to tell. A few young Homo Sapiens Sapiens, with a mutual care of creativity got together the intent to create an art-music-comic-book-universe-meme-plex. We realized we had many shared interests. We read, learned, created, and broke the law. We watched the world change around us, and many times, it didn’t seem like the change was for the better. We came to realize that many people were just going through the motions. We watched as our friends died around us. We watched. Then we decided to do something. We realized that we weren’t alone. We realized that there was action to be taken. We were tired of apathy. So here we are. Which brings us to the Mythological history. A Mythos, you must understand, occurs in what Anthropologists call “Sacred Time”. This is just a way of saying that instead of being linear, it’s cyclical in nature. A Mythos exists Before, Now, and Evermore. Past, Present, and Future. It has no start or finish; it loops. It’s dynamic and fluid. Our Mythos has a few major elements at this point, I could go on for days about this stuff, but the only way to discover the mythos is to observe the imagery, listen to the music, and read the comics, stories and/or articles of those involve, thus you will find out more as time goes on. What is presently pertinent is what I’m about to tell you, and it’s very important. A secret of sorts. Here goes: A Myth is not a lie. It is not something made to simply entertain. Our Myth is real eat… to us. Over time, the meaning of the term “Myth” has been corrupted to mean a falsehood, a lie, an untruth. A Myth has value. It is no more a lie than ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R. Tolkien, or ‘1984’ by George Orwell. But it’s not a “fiction” either. It is true in every sense of the word. It’s hard to explain this idea, since integrated Myth has been virtually eliminated or hidden from modern society. To comprehend Mythology, one needs to simply read. Joseph Campbell, a prominent Mythologist said: “Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts —but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is.” Although, he also said “Go on, live your life, it’s a good life—you don’t need mythology”. We agree. You don’t need our Mythology (or anything else). Take what you want from ECLECTOPLASM. But keep this in mind: you can play a part in the Mythos if you want. Our doors are open. If you want to understand what we are trying to say, read anything by Joseph Campbell. We recommend The Power of Myth w/ Bill Moyers, which was the source of the previous quotes. #4. Where We Located?: Welcome to The Plasm. The Plasm is the superstructure of ECLECTOPLASM. It is not only physical in position, it also exists in the mind. It can be observed and created, but in cannot be pinned down or destroyed (you can’t make something un-exist once it is brought into being!). The name itself is simply a convenience; you can call IT whatever you wish. The Plasm is whatever/whenever/wherever/ we have consciously shaped our environment. To this end, we intend to build physical and cultural structures in the world as an act of creativity. We rename places and things according to their true nature and/or what we want them to become. We do all of this and more. In short, we make the Universe into the shape of our choosing. Imagine the contents of your mind spilled onto the landscape. Imagine your wildest fantasies coming true. Culture creates automatic thought. If we create the culture, we regain control of ourselves. Remember: The Map (Software) is not the Territory (Hardware), and the Territory is not the Map, but they often influence each other. Think of how many people passively consume media (Images, Graphic Novels, Movies, Music, Video Games &c.), and silently wish that they could live in the world that they are presented with. Think of the kid playing D&D who wishes she was living the game. Think of the person reading the Sci-Fi novel who wishes that he could fly a spaceship, or own a robot. Think of the person who plays a video game and wishes that magic was real. Think of those who are creating these things but not believing for a second that they could be anything more than an illusion. They, the dreamers, are the hope for our society. Now is the time for the dreamers to awake. The lie that we’ve been told is that we can never live our fantasies. We’ve been told it’s pointless to even try. Listen: They are WRONG. We can and we will. We’re NOT idealists or escapists, we just think that we’ll not reach the moon by jumping. We only need to start building our rocket. What do you want most? Do you want a cookie-cutter life forced on you by the pessimistic powers-that-be? Will you unquestioningly accept what you never wanted in the first place? As of now, The Plasm is physically located in the East Bay Area of Northern California, USA, North America, Earth-‘Prime’, Milk Way Galaxy. And we are growing. #5. How We Do It?: Ultimately, the methods behind and beside Creativity are left to the individual to decide. But, we have discovered certain memes which are conducive to our Creativity. Note that our methods are often the same as the ideas that we wish to communicate to others through our Creativity. Just like many others, we follow the classical elemental schema in the act of Creation/Destruction. Fire: We draw inspiration from the Universe, and decide to act. Air: We Analyze, Discriminate, Plan, & Think (usually with Goals & Purposes in mind). Water: We Create & Destroy. Earth: We implement our Creativity to provoke change in the Universe. (Repeat ad infinitum/nauseum) We also have a few affirmations that seem to work very well. The first is: Start Small; Then Grow; Stay Dense. The first two parts are pretty easy to understand, but what do we mean by “Stay Dense”? Well, one thing we have discovered is that by not spreading oneself too thin (both literally and metaphorically), we can increase the effectiveness of what we are trying to do. Think of it this way, say that you have 1,000 stickers in your possession that you intend to use in a street art campaign, and you have two choices as to where you can put them. You can either: Put 1 sticker in 1,000 cities all across the world, or put all of the stickers on one block of a major city. It’s obvious which is more effective of the two. In memetic terms, it can mean to minimize the influence of competing memes by retaining the integrity of the idea-structure (until ya get critical mass). Think of a pipe bomb (or then again…); it must be tight and contained to facilitate the explosion. The trick is to see how this idea is valuable across scale and across application. Another of “our” affirmations, that you may have heard before, is: Think Globally; Act Locally. Let’s break it down shall we? Ok, the first part, Think Globally, we take to mean a few main things. First is See The Big Picture, which means exactly what it sounds like. We try and see how our actions fit into the grand scale of things. Next is Think Long-Term. We try and avoid short-sightedness when we can. To Think Globally means putting things into perspective. The next part is Act Locally. The hermetic idea of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm will help here. The idea is that nature is self-similar across scale, and that the Micro and Macro can affect each other. When we Act Locally, we take the path of least resistance by changing the Macrocosm (higher scale) through the agency of the Microcosm (lower scale). Where are we? Right here; right now! This relates to the previous idea “Stay Dense”. Mother Teresa said: “If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”. When we Act Locally, we seek to build Unity and Community. One more affirmation we will touch on is Hack Duality/Reality. We do this not only to Exploit, but to Transcend as well. One way we can do this is by recognizing the concepts of Linearity and Circularity. Linearity is the logical, rational, reasonable, historical, and objective side, and Circularity is the subjective, mythological, self-referential Möbius Strip. The snake eating its tail. We often come together for One-Time Only gatherings. One type of gathering we might call ‘hanging out’ and another we might call ‘a meeting’. Both share the features of Open-Endedness, and Spontaneity. Hanging out, seems a gathering with an unplanned agenda; goal(s) are optional, and constructed on-the-spot. Meetings, on the other hand, are Planned gatherings, with the goal(s) planned in advance (even if the goal is to just hang out and have no goals!). Hanging out may still construct on-the-spot goals if desired, due to the Open-Ended and Spontaneous nature of the gathering. Both, as mentioned before, are One-Time Only occurrences. Most everyone has a group of friends and/or colleagues they can get together with and vibe with each other to ceate and brainstorm, why not DO IT? When our Creativity necessitates more in-depth planning, we default to what we call Projectoplasm. There are two modes, one is more or less Continuous/Infinite, and another Non-continuous/Finite with a definite end. Finite Projectoplasm is symbolized by or more Tentacles, and continuous Projectoplasm is symbolized by or more Wings. The reason for the choice of symbols should be fairly obvious. Read stuff by Hakim Bey #6. Why We Do It?: Do we even need a reason? Should we have to legitimize our actions to anyone but ourselves? These are rhetorical questions with rhetorical answers. We do it because we want to! We do it because we feel like it! We do it because we can! We do what we enjoy, and enjoy what we do! We want gratification for all, while flipping the bird to gratification. We do it because we feel that it is important and worthwhile, but many still ask us: “If you people are all about ‘Creativity’, then why do you need to do so in a group when you can be creative on your own, it seems like you do it to feed your ego.” While ego-stroking is a favorite pastime of ours, it is not the only benefit of working in a group. We think that the limitations of working solo should be fairly obvious, so we won’t enumerate on that. But, there is one major benefit of working as a team that trumps most others. That benefit is Synergy. Simply put, Synergy occurs when the whole becomes more than just the sum of its parts. Buckminster Fuller brought forth this term, and in fact, he wrote an entire book on it. Artist/Authors William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin called it The Third Mind. “. . .when you put two minds together, there is always a third mind, a third and superior mind as an unseen collaborator.” ~William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. ‘The Third Mind’. “. . .one doctrine that emanated from a medieval mystical school philosophizes that there are always two contending forces—for the sake of convenience labeled Severity and Mildness—with a third that always reconciles them. ~ Israel Regardie. Introducing ‘Prometheus Rising’ by Robert Anton Wilson. ++ +++ +++++ ++++++++ So there you have it folks. The Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why of ECLECTOPLASM. Go forth, and Multiply the word! Amen! ~Turia Madi Anti©2010 TURIA MADI and THE PLASM free to reproduce and distribute, as long as you don’t change anything or try to Copyright it yourself, and please contact us so we know what you’re up to. See Also: The Invisibles See Also: Table of Contents